Accelerating Interdisciplinary Team Science
to Create Antiviral Drugs for Emerging Viruses

READDI will curate and manage projects led by interdisciplinary teams of virologists, medicinal chemists, and drug development experts from academia and industry, with specific expertise in developing antiviral drugs. Programs for each virus family will be launched for projects spanning target discovery through lead optimization and preclinical testing to advance assets to Phase I testing for safety, dosing, and efficacy. These cross-sector teams will work together throughout the entire process to ensure all stages of drug discovery and development are considered from the start, minimizing false starts and allowing READDI to focus on the most promising avenues for new drug development.

Traditional drug discovery approaches have significant shortcomings for future viruses. Typical antiviral drug discovery strategies seek to inhibit the function of a viral protein required for virus replication. However, this requires detailed knowledge of the viral target, which we can’t know in advance for a new virus. Creating this knowledge requires months, if not years—time we don’t have during a pandemic. READDI circumvents this problem by developing antiviral drugs targeting cellular proteins pandemic viruses need to replicate and cause disease.

Even though new viruses emerge with ever-increasing frequency, we still lack antiviral therapeutics for the vast majority of viral diseases. That’s because most companies can’t afford to make a drug before there is a market need, and large gaps exist in the scientific community that prevent communication and breakthroughs. READDI aims to solve both of these problems at once. Through our global access model, READDI will accelerate the pace of antiviral development globally for three viral families with the most pandemic potential — coronaviruses, flaviviruses and alphaviruses.

Universities

Foundations

Philanthropists

Government

Pharmaceutical Industries

Target Discovery:

Academic institutions will take the lead in this phase, backed up by philanthropic funding. These institutions will work to identify druggable targets for new antivirals for multiple viruses including alphaviruses, flaviviruses and coronaviruses.

Target Validation:

Academic institutions will continue their research, breaking down molecular targets to prove they are key to stopping viral threats.

Hit Identification: ​

Universities and pharmaceutical partners will work in tandem to deliver an antiviral therapy with confirmed activity against the target disease.

Lead Identification:

Backed by government resources, academic institutions and pharmaceutical partners will study the underlying cellular and genetic makeup of the target disease and conduct in vitro testing of select inhibitors for antiviral activity.

Candidate Selection:

University and pharmaceutical stakeholders will prove the efficacy of the antiviral therapy through cellular and animal models, studying animal dose responses and assessing for optimization in clinical development.

Preclinical Studies:

All three fields will work to test the optimized compound for antiviral activity and then formulate and deliver the treatment.

Phase I Studies:

Advisors in the pharmaceutical industry will ensure the safety and efficacy of the drug while overseeing regulatory and manufacturing concerns.

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Nat Moorman, Associate Professor, UNC School of Microbiology and Immunology

"Collaboration has to be built into the solution. And that's really what READDI is about, is bringing together all the different people with the best expertise in the areas where we need it and focusing them on the single problem of making new antiviral drugs."